by Paris Gordon
What’s up Apex Insiders? The ROC season has officially concluded now that the ROC Cup is over (congrats, Daniel!). The new season starting means it’s back to the ROC Limited format for the first half of the season. For those of you that don’t know, that’s no Resources, Relics, ID Cards, Equips that equip during force construction, or anything larger than a peanut base. Normally this is a format where builds vary widely and there’s a lot of room for creativity (because you don’t have to worry about everything just dying to an ID call-in, or having to make sure you play figures that can call in the ID cards you need). But with the release of Uni-Mind, I believe he has ruined the format. There’s no longer a large variety of builds that can see success; now there’s maybe 3 with one being Uni himself and the others being a direct response to Uni and even then aren’t great counters. In my opinion, Uni-Mind should be banned from the Limited format (not Modern, only Limited), and I’m going to give my reasoning here.
First let’s look at the main “team” that I’m talking about. 295 Uni-Mind (all Eternals -Ajak) with the Boxing Ring. For the record, I also think Special Terrain shouldn’t be allowed in Limited, but that’s less of an issue and wouldn’t fix the Uni-Mind problem because 300 by itself is just as good. But the Boxing Ring certainly helps, you’ll often find it changing 7s to 9s for your opponent; also Uni can go in and out very easily with Hypersonic. Combining two +2/-2 Perplexes with another -2 puts numbers way in your favor. Losing the one Eternal doesn’t matter because you don’t KO anyway and you get the same number of Perplexes.
So why is he so strong? Let’s first look at why he’s so much better in Limited than Modern. Chase Green Arrow is one of the strongest counters to Uni, to get through his printed reducers and STOP clicks (and after hitting, allowing a follow up attack to also ignore these). In Modern, Uni-Mind can’t really prevent Green Arrow from getting an attack off on him since he comes off an ID card. But in Limited, Green Arrow isn’t a threat at all. The only thing you can do is play him on your main force, in which case Uni can easily kill him (and if you play against non-Uni teams he’s much less valuable usually). Other ID cards also threaten Uni, and since he will have a max of one of his own, he gets out-powered. And of course, at 295/300 he can’t use Resources or Equips either. Despite all of this, we’ve still seen 295 Uni show up at the ROC Cup and WKOs. In Limited though, all of those weaknesses are gone and he stays exactly the same. Already a bad sign.
There’s also several other key differences. Figures in general have less reducers with no Eclipso/Brainiac or Teleporter to hand them out, making Uni’s Hypersonic more threatening. No Colossal Retaliations allows him to attack your main figures without worrying about getting Retaliated on (and having a Symbiote drop on him). His main opponent in Modern, Jakeem, is suddenly much weaker without Eclipso and Supreme Intelligence backing him up. Jakeem also is forced to pick offensive powers to get good attacks off, unlike in Modern where he can stick to defensive powers and attack with call-ins; Jakeem is also forced to pick Willpower to avoid pushing instead of just getting it from Supreme Intelligence. Jakeem is also weaker to Outwit in Limited, which doesn’t matter in the Uni vs Jakeem match, but does make Jakeem worse in other matchups than Uni (and why Uni is ban-worthy and Jakeem isn’t, in my opinion).
Now let’s look at some of the other team options in Limited. I’ve already talked some about Jakeem. Shredders were very good last time Limited was around, but now with Peggy Carter being essentially worthless (her power was ruled as a “burst” as opposed to an “aura”), and Outwit not affecting Uni, there’s basically no way through his Invincible making Shredders useless against him. Dr. Octopus has also seen a lot of Limited play, but again with Peggy less viable and Outwit not affecting him, having to get through Shape Change each attack and only doing 1-damage even if the attack does go through, and then dying in one hit from Uni, he also can’t compete. Lots of other teams like swarm teams or pog teams can’t deal with him because it’s just too hard to slog through his dial, while also giving him easy figures to Steal Energy off of on his STOP click. You could play something like Nick Fury, Green Arrow, and Jean Grey which could kill Uni in one turn, but this is pretty unreliable. If you lose map Uni will go on an indoor map with walls and be safe. Even if you do get the attacks off, if you miss Green Arrow’s you’re kind of screwed. And Uni being in the Ring makes hitting these attacks anything but automatic. And having to specifically counterbuild one figure isn’t healthy anyway, but more on that later. There’s also the option of playing lots of Barriers that Uni can’t get through, but this much much more often than not just results in 0-0 losses/rolloffs. And then of course there’s the Uni mirrors which are unfun and usually 0-0 also.
Enough about his power level though. There will always be something that’s the best. But Uni is specifically unhealthy, unfun, and bad for the scene. It’s not that he’s just unbeatable. He’s very very hard to beat though, so hard that you either have to play him, play a specific counterbuild (Nick/Arrow) that may 
not have a good matchup against anything else, or play something that can beat other stuff and go 0-0 with Uni (lots of Barrier). Mirror matches and Uni/Barrier matches are almost completely non-interactive: the Barrier player just Barriers every turn and Uni can’t do anything and that goes on for 45 minutes, or two Unis just dance around each other and if the players are aggressive enough and the dice are willing, maybe one person wins, but it’s usually also 0-0. Not only are these matches boring and non-interactive, but they’re bad for tournaments because you might have every top 8 game decided by a rolloff, or lots of double losses in Swiss. And counter-building isn’t fun or varied, it’s just whatever is the best way to use Green Arrow against him, and THAT game isn’t fun or interactive either because it’s just turn 2 go up and shoot and hope you hit.
In summary: Uni-Mind is so strong that he will be by far the most played piece; he will either win or go 0-0 in almost every single matchup; playing against him is rarely fun or interactive; his presence severely limits build options. I would love to hear your thoughts on it, Apex Insiders. See you in Limited!
